Let me give you a passage from H. L. Hastings: "A friend of mine
visited the Fiji Islands in 1844, and what do you suppose an infidel
was worth there then? You could buy a man for a musket, or if you paid
money, for seven dollars, and after you had bought him you could feed
him, starve him, work him, whip him, or eat him--they generally ate
them, unless they were so full of tobacco they could not stomach them!
But if you go there to-day you could not buy a man for seven million
dollars. There are no men for sale there now. What has made the
difference in the price of humanity? The twelve hundred Christian
chapels scattered over that Island tell the story. The people have
learned to read that Book which says: 'Ye were not redeemed with
corruptible things as silver and gold, but with the precious blood of
Christ'; and since they learned that lesson, no man is for sale
there."
Men tell me that the world is getting so much better. We talk of our
American civilization. We forget the alarming increase of crime in our
midst. It is said that there is no civilized country on the globe
where murder is so frequently committed and so seldom punished.